10 LIFE-ALTERING BABY CARE HACKS

Put a little bit of apple sauce or other fruit sauce in a cloth, roll-up, and freeze. Once frozen, let baby suck on it and feel the relief!

HowDoesShe

2. BABY PACIFIER/MEDICINE DISPENSER

You need to get medicine in the baby to ease her fever or settle her stomach, but How?

With a specially made pacifier just for the occasion.

Babyology

3. INFANT MASSAGE FOR GAS PAINS AND DIGESTION

YOU SUSPECT BABY’S TUMMY UPSET IS DUE TO GAS. GIVE HIM A TUMMY MASSAGE:

4. KEEP BABY ASLEEP CONSISTENTLY, A FRENCH PARENTING HACK

Simply pause instead of responding rapidly to your baby’s frequent cries in order to give her a chance to settle down on her own. This is an idea via Paula Drukerman’s Bringing Up Bebe,

A French pediatrician practicing in downtown NYC explained some of the logic behind this approach to Druckerman, saying that if a baby is just sleeping noisily or barely awakened between sleep cycles, a mother who picks the child up and feeds him is just further disturbing the baby’s sleep and creating a sleep association (the need to be fed or held to fall back asleep) that didn’t previously exist. {So parents of poor sleepers aren’t just responding to their awakenings, they might be unintentionally causing them.} The thinking is, once you allow and enable a baby to “learn” how to sleep through a sleep cycle transition, like learning to ride a bike, she will be off! Sleeping like a champ in no time. ~DirtyDiaperChic

5. BABY REFLEXOLOGY

Is your little one still crying and nothing works?

Your baby’s feet might not be very useful yet, but one area where they can be put to use is in the comfort department. The foot contains various zones that correlate to certain discomfort areas. By applying gentle pressure to the relevant zone, you can easily help soothe your crying baby. ~Corcell

Corcell

6. ALWAYS HAVE A BIB HANDY WHEN IT’S FEEDING TIME

Command Hooks to the rescue!

OMGFacts

7. KEEP TOYS FROM GETTING OUT OF BABY’S REACH

OMGFacts

8. NO MORE POOP ALL OVER HACK

So that’s what those flaps are for,

Now that my two kids are past the baby stage, I’m ashamed to admit I never knew this elementary parenting onesie trick. Reddit to the rescue: “So, I just learned that these little folds on infants’ onesies are not to accommodate babies with giant heads. They are so you can slip the whole thing down over their shoulders and off their legs if they have a diaper blowout, and the onesie is covered in poop. That way you don’t have to pull the dirty shirt over the child’s head!” ~SheKnows